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The Ramblers - Derbyshire Dales Group |
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Ethiopia. Why?
Ethiopia is a fascinating country, just about everything you can think of is different from Britain which makes it a very exotic place to visit. They use the Julian calendar so it is 1997, there are 13 months in the year and the New Year starts in Sept. The language is Amharric and the alphabet is unique. A typical Ethiopian night out involves a meal based on injera, which is a sort of big floppy pancake looking like a not very clean dish cloth and made from a fermented grass-like grain called tef. This is served on a common platter with various, usually spicy, foods on top and you eat it by pulling off a piece of injera and wrapping it round a piece of meat etc. This is accompanied by music and dancing which gets wilder and wilder.
As well as the views we saw gelada baboons, walia ibex, lammergeyers, thick billed ravens, giant heathers, giant lobelias, giant St John's Wort and lots more. The things we did not see which gave us some trouble were the fleas- at least we think they were fleas!
What else did we do? There were visits to the castles at Gonder and the stelae at Aksum, a trip to the rift valley lakes and time to look round Addis Ababa. Back at the airport for the flight home the birdwatchers, culture vultures and trekkers were all there comparing notes. Everyone had had an amazing time in this beautiful country. Sue Weatherley |
Why? That was the usual reaction when we said we were going to Ethiopia. This happened so often that I began to wonder why we were going myself, so it was refreshing to arrive at the check in at Heathrow to find all these other people ready, willing and eager to get there. Our fellow passengers were mainly tourists and mainly in groups of various kinds- there were birdwatchers, trekkers, mountain bikers and culture vultures. So there are lots of reasons to go, and plenty of space- once we arrived and left Addis Ababa we saw very few other tourists, apart from occasionally encountering the people we met at Heathrow.
We went with an Explore trip and it proved to be just right for us. We had an eight day trek in the Simien Mountains which was long enough to enjoy the spectacular scenery, climb some peaks and see something of the wildlife but short enough to allow us to visit some other parts of the country.
The Simien Mountains are spectacular. We started our trek by leaving the bus on a dirt road and walking across a pasture area, the air was suddenly full of the scent of thyme as we walked over this and other low growing plants. After a very short distance we came, very suddenly, to the edge and a stunning view over cliffs covered in heather forest. The area is a very high plateau dissected by deep ravines so we found ourselves continually coming to high points with dizzy drops below and amazing views. At one point we looked across to a spectacular waterfall dropping into a chasm below. 'How high is it?' 'Over 900m' 'That's almost as high as Angel Falls' 'That's right'.
The plateau height is about 3,000 to 3,500m and each day took us up to a high point of 4,000m or higher, Ras Dashen was the highest point of the trip, and of Ethiopia, at 4,543m. We felt the effects of the altitude; at least I think it was the altitude that made it feel like hard work and not just general debility. While we were recovering from our exertions the local children (mostly barefoot) were running round chasing sheep and goats. The people in the mountain villages are mainly subsistence farmers which means a hard life and they are very poor. No electricity or running water. We visited a local school one day and they explained that some children cannot come to school at all as they are needed to help on the family farm and others stay away at certain times to help with harvest etc. It was harvest time while we were there and we saw people cutting barley and wheat with sickles and the threshing was done by spreading the cut stalks on the ground on a flat circle and then using cattle, donkeys or mules to walk round in circles on top of the crop the separate the grain from the straw. Goodness knows how they collect all the grain afterwards- we did not see that bit.
We were also able to visit the churches of Lalibela which are incredible as they are carved out of the solid bed-rock. There are some amazing treasures there. The priest brings out some interesting shaped crosses and there are paintings and icons that in any other part of the world would be locked away in a museum. You can actually turn the pages of ancient vellum bibles. We had a lovely walk to one of the outlying monasteries. This involved a stiff climb up to a plateau which we crossed and then followed along the base of a cliff until we came to a tunnel which was a cut passage with steps and took us through to a rock cut monastery- adventure book stuff really.